Zvi Drizin

Founder @Theintownchabad @smuchabad
Long Dallas
Long Jewish People

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

@liel @LeeSmithDC @AcrossTheBay @hpmcd1 Tuckers cabin vibes

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

@DallasAptGP Why is perot doing the podcast circuit lately?

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

@thevillagerabbi R’ Aaron Rakefet has a great series on Torah in modern times and he opens with essentially this question.

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

@hitsamty This is EXACTLY the real estate content we come for!

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

@thevillagerabbi Zeyde

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

Litvak’s Teyreh and Steinbeck’s Timshel ftw https://t.co/o7Pwwz2vaH

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

@DallasAptGP How is it that the Dallas business journal can’t do enough journalism to figure out who sellers actually are… didn’t Nazarian own maple terrace too?

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

@realEstateTrent Looks like @instinct

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

@shabboshouse Baruch Dayan emes. May you find comfort

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

@liel @tabletmag T’was a beautiful article.

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

@politicalelle Obviously he’d say that!!!

[liel leibovitz @liel]

So I wrote a post claiming the storming of the Flydubai cockpit was a miracle and thanking God for His mercy. Almost immediately, a lot of people, including smart and decent and well-meaning people, raised an objection: If you're going to praise God for saving this plane, does that mean you should also praise Him for all the other victims that weren't saved? This, my commentators replied, was monstrous, and suggested either that I got faith all wrong or that I believed in a Supreme Being capable not only of miracles but also of atrocities.

Now, X clearly isn't the place for complicated conversations about theodicy, but I'll say this. One of the most astonishing phrases in the Mishna teaches us that "one is obligated to recite a blessing for the bad that befalls him just as he recites a blessing for the good that befalls him" (Brachot 9:5).

This, Rambam explains, is because we can never know the mind of God. Sometimes, things that strike us as catastrophic have an ultimate purpose or ending that's pure good, and sometimes things that appear wonderful are simply a pathway to ruination. The point is that our human minds, active and noble as they may be, could never grasp even a sliver of God's intentions.

That's why Kierkegaard, to name but one famous example, stated that faith is greater than logic, because it grappled with uncertainty in ways reason could not even begin to handle.

You're free to grapple with this view. You're free to dive deeper into the works of wise men and women who thought and wrote extensively on this matter. But when you write something like "Why would God choose to intervene here and not on October 7" or "If that's the God you believe in, then He's a psychopath," you're not being profound or edgy. You're revealing a mind scrubbed of curiosity, imagination, and any capacity for belief, which is to say a mind starved of any substance greater than what it could immediately grasp.

Our greatest religious thinkers were always doubters. Doubt, as G.K. Chesterton observed, is primarily the domain of the believer -- the non-believer has no use for it. But doubt doesn't mean dismissing difficult notions in a crude fashion and feeling yourself smarter for it. It means taking the time to learn, question, and understand.

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

@dovidzak @HasidicA When I picked up machanayim books to read to my kids…. I promptly closed them - not the world we live in.

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

@Bryan_Kluger Well said

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

There's been a proliferation of dancing/"spiritual"/niggun videos out of every corner of the frum world... what gives?

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

@patrick_oshag This is the most over rated book - there I said it.
Ps. Thank you for the Conquistador recommendation - not over rated.

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

@thematthew @moseskagan Yes. Our concern too…

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

@IlanBlock More like this

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

@DBashIdeas @MyShtender AI filtering software must have been down at tablet for this response.

[Zvi Drizin @ZviDrizin]

@dov_rabinowitz How many people in that room understand Yiddish? Or is that a rite of passage?